For this book - the first to include the artist's rare work in colour - Desmazières has delved deep into the arcane theme of cabinets of curiousities. Taking as his starting point the melancholy musings of the seventeenth-century physician and antiquary Sir Thomas Browne, he has reinterpreted these shadowy collections of the recondite, rare and bizarre - precious corals, preserved specimens, shrunken heads and magical artefacts - as a series of meditations on the vanity of earthly life.

The book explores the exceptional contribution Cardinal Camillo Massimo (1620-1677) made to the culture of seventeenth-century Rome. A close friend of Nicolas Poussin and Diego Velazquez and an even closer friend Giovan Pietro Bellori, Massimo combined a sophisticated intellect with a wide range of cultural interests, which he pursued with determination. The volume reconstructs his patronage and collection in the context of the society that produced him, and argues for his role as an active force promoting particular artists, theories and enterprises in Baroque Rome.